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Plunder and Sacrilege At Thermus

Up to this point everything was right and fair by the

Sacrilege committed at Thermus. Was it justifiable?

laws of war; but I do not know how to
characterise their next proceedings. For remembering what the Aetolians had done at
Dium1 and Dodona,2 they burnt the colonnades,
and destroyed what were left of the dedicated offerings, some
of which were of costly material, and had been elaborated with
great skill and expense. And they were not content with
destroying the roofs of these buildings with fire, they levelled
them to their foundations; and threw down all the statues, which
numbered no less than two thousand; and many of them they
broke to pieces, sparing only those that were inscribed with
the names or figures of gods. Such they did abstain from
injuring. On the walls also they wrote the celebrated line composed
by Samus, the son of Chrysogonus, a foster-brother of
the king, whose genius was then beginning to manifest itself.
The line was this—
“"Seest thou the path the bolt divine has sped?"”
And in fact the king and his staff were fully convinced that, in
thus acting, they were obeying the dictates of right and
justice, by retaliating upon the Aetolians with the same
impious outrages as they had themselves committed at Dium.3
But I am clearly of an opposite opinion. And the readiest
argument, to prove the correctness of my view, may be drawn
from the history of this same royal family of Macedonia.

For when Antigonus, by his victory in a pitched battle over
Cleomenes the King of the Lacedaemonians, had become master
of Sparta, and had it absolutely in his own power to treat the
town and its citizens as he chose, he was so far from doing
any injury to those who had thus fallen into his hands, that
he did not return to his own country until he had bestowed
upon the Lacedaemonians, collectively and individually, some
benefits of the utmost importance. The consequence was
that he was honoured at the time with the title of "Benefactor,"
and after his death with that of "Preserver"; and not only
among the Lacedaemonians, but among the Greeks generally,
has obtained undying honour and glory.4

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